


All Things

by Angelas



Category: Thief (Video Games)
Genre: Emotional Compromise, Idealism, M/M, Metrical Prose, Slow Burn, Timeline What Timeline, Voyeurism, tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:34:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4532805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angelas/pseuds/Angelas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrett develops a crush he does not know how to have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. By the By

**Author's Note:**

> so, after buying and beating the game, i think i'm in love.
> 
> also, i took liberty on basing OC's looks on Richard Armitage's appearance via Robin Hood, [like this](http://data.whicdn.com/images/63741963/original.gif)
> 
> thank you to sorrowsfall, for helping me out<3

**oOo**

The first time Garrett sees him it is from far above the weathered parapets of Riverside.

Had he known the man he would have gone as always, without thought. But even from where he stands, cloaked within The City’s slag, the sight is more unusual than not.

Enough, at least, to tempt Garrett to a stop.

Fair.

Leaden hair. Tall, and parading what looks most like the initiate toggery of The Watch. Piqued, Garrett dithers on the ledge, for at the man’s waist, something glitters in the dark.

Knives. No. Daggers. Sharp. Two of the same, and recently burnished to a shine, no less.  

Looking back, Garrett fails to recall a living guard who’d knack enough to bear them. Smaller and clever and all the more swifter than just the typical flagpole of a sword.

Something new. Something gleaming.

Something quite like _those_.

He lingers now. And from where he stands, in the slight light of the moon, the hilts begin to sheen rich with golden finish. Dual-etched into a spiraling form, into the mold of two naked women. Too sleek for paint, and too smooth for common iron.

Gilt, then. Draped upon steel. Thinly set. But no less gilt.

The daggers, Garrett decides, are already his.

He begins to descend, aiming towards the rim of the battered rooftop that lay loose below the parapet. In the quiet, some of the tiles clatter underneath his weight.

He crouches, low and still, assessing all around him.

Not ten feet beneath the guard continues to stride along. Brisk. Shoulders squared, unhurried footsteps that toll against the stone. Gloved. Lean. At least, enough to conjure speed. And had Garrett not learnt and mastered from all he’d known, he would have allowed the opportunity to go. Armed like that, and in confidence, skill must in some way play its role.

Then again, it could also just be exactly what it looks like:

Another idiot in the dark.

Smug, out to prove, and partnerless for it. No heavied greaves nor helmet, and no torch to guide him through the bridge.

Foreign, then. Must be. Or witless.

Either way, Garrett starts to move, crossing towards an offset. Even if the guy wasn’t from here, in The City, there are no clean-handed landings that come from the far-wharfs over the ocean.

He follows in silence, and waits until the guard is a hand’s length away from the river’s paling. Garrett starts to count the seconds. If he were to take well on timing, he could simply grab once for both daggers without having to knock the man into the water.

But all does not fare.

For his legs ach at the tendons from an earlier errand he’d labored for Basso. And, miscalculating the distance between himself and the next available terrace, Garrett missteps, causing a thick slither of dust to powder below.

Immediately, the guard stills into place. The dust lies clear on his shoulder. His hands hover over the helves of both blades, but he does not draw them.

Still, there is time enough to swoop away from the ledge. But if he moves now, in such a short distance, Garrett knows he will be spotted.

“You dawdle well enough,” says the guard, and the voice is silked with accent. “As they say. How you meld like grime against the walls.”

Garrett’s lip tucks upwards by a thread.

Foreign, indeed.

With even some sense of wit. And with a fine pair of those, no doubt wealthy.

Slowly, Garrett shifts his footing. The daggers mock him with a pretty grin, but age and past misgivings have honed him best to know the better thrills there are in waiting.

He glances down.

Once and only just, at the face so close beneath him.

Because once is all he’ll need, before he gives himself back into the shadows.

**oOo**

He returns to the clock tower. Five after midnight.

In bed, with a silver coin drawn between his knuckles, he relays in his mind the entire incident for another countless time.

What could’ve gone, what hadn’t. How all the two daggers, in time, would come to glisten only for him behind a priceless case of glass.

The hues. The shapes. The gains, the worth. The challenge.

Garrett tells himself these things. In all the different ways he can.

**oOo**

The coin tumbles from his hand.

By the by, in the low pall of distant lamplights, the man had blue eyes.

**oOo**

When dusk falls, Garrett wakes and goes.

The wait isn’t long, and by the tenth minute that he is there, the guard emerges from the river’s fog.

Same as before. Tall. Blue-eyed. But without the daggers.

Garrett’s brow purls low.

There is nothing to be had.

Yet, he stays. And tarries well into the hour for a reason he does not have.

**oOo**

The next night, he’s paid well for the quick toil of a break-in job.

The City is quiet.

He goes to the overpass. And waits.

Not a minute goes until the guard appears along the empty thoroughfare.

This time, Garrett keeps his distance. The daggers, he sees, are again not present. Instead, they are replaced. By the dull glister of a smallsword, branded at the hem with the whorled insignia of The Watch.

He should leave now to plan. To think and to decide. The prowl is young, and all must live someplace where there are locks waiting to be picked apart.

Still, even after the guard’s fifth traipse around the premise, Garrett yet remains. He is perhaps three ells above ground, loosely hidden aside the ruins of a nearby pipe vent.

He doesn’t know why he does it. But he does it, anyway. He descends. His feet touch the ground. A soft noise against the pavement. The guard halts, mid-bridge. A single reed away from where Garrett blends into the gloaming.

All is silent.

“I know your dally.” The voice is deep, jeered. A solemn knell against the flagstone. “Little _thief_.”

“Will you tell?”

“Ah, so it speaks.”

A pause, and Garrett’s mouth is already moving on its own. “You think well of the Baron.”

“The Baron pays.”

“Then you’re not from around here.”

The guard laughs. An incisive echo in the dark. “Indeed.”

Then, without warning, all of the words in the world disperse into a smog. He can say nothing, and think nothing. Instead, he is left with a tightening sensation stuck inside his throat. Like tar. Like sand. His fingers stir and graze against the wall.

Someplace along the bridge, the guard shifts. A gentle, careful mix of metal-gear and cloth. Then, like liquid, a chuckle fills the space between them.

“Now, if you are finished.”

Footsteps. A neatness to them. The guard passes him by, not even a half-foot away, leaving behind a faint loom of scent. Wood-myrrh. Or moss.

Or maybe nothing.

**oOo**

By the morrow’s dusk, Garrett goes to Ector for the last half of a promised payment.

He keeps to the ground and alleys. But before he can make the final turn to the emporium, there is one of The City’s five apothecaries.

This night, the fenestra of it lies unlatched and open. It catches Garrett’s eye. He doubletakes some steps back. And listens.

From the sill’s rift, a conversation steadily unwinds. Garrett doesn’t move to look inside, but knows only that he recognizes one of two voices.

“It is no wonder,” one says. “The soot in every breath of air. What with the filth from the factories.”

“Ah, but not just the factories,” the other presses. “Some say, they think it deviltry.”

“The ash, you mean?”

“The ash, Ser Jame.”

**oOo**

When he returns to the tower, Garrett mouths the letters to the open darkness of the spire.

To the wheeling of the sprockets, to the ticking of the hour:

He says it.

To the taper by his bed. To the dirt, to the cogs that grind and creak around him.  

Once, he tells it. And pretends he never told it.

Jame.

**oOo**

By the end of the week, Basso sends Jenivere to him.

The message is brief. There’s a job open, and it needs doing.

Garrett grabs his bow and makes for the tavern where he knows he will find him.

**oOo**

When he gets there, wet with rain, Basso is already waiting for him.

The place is crowded. Garrett folds his arms against his chest.

“Garrett! Thought it would take you a little longer to get here, slippery roofs and all. Need a drink? Maybe a slice of Rhonda's moldy cheese?”

“I’m allergic.”

“Oh, come on--”

“The job. Basso.”

“Right. The job.”

He takes out a folded note from his pocket and hands it to Garrett. Slowly, Garrett looks it down and unfolds it.

“A list?”

“It’s simple. New guy in town, and there’s word he’s got way too many shinies sitting around. I just happen to know the address and which pickings are actually worth the win.” Basso clears his throat, lowering his voice. There’s a grin on him that Garrett knows far too well. “Extra pay in it, too. Hell, you can keep it for free, _if_ you can bring back something pretty I missed.”

Garrett stares at the paper. Something like a pull or knot. A stir of something, touched.

Basso taps his foot. “You in, or what?”

Garrett pockets the list.

“Where can I find him.”

**oOo**

Greystone’s main street.

Not three lanes away from Alfonso’s Attire. High up, with a single gated window and a vulnerable thin-glassed dormer that looked easy enough to slip into.

By rope, Garrett begins the long trek towards the top floor of the building, his feet a silent whisper against the flagstone.

In less than two minutes, he’s crouched evenly upon the berm. Shrouded by the eventide.

He looks and sees that the window’s hasp is both unbolted and unlocked. All the lights inside are off. He reaches once for the latch. A silver glister in the dark, and stops.

Footsteps. Booted. Muted heavy on rug.

Instantly, Garrett takes his hand away from the window. The glass is too thin to muffle his chance at a safe enough jump for the rope, so he frames himself against the wooden scheme of the dormer, and stills. Inside, a single candle is lit. He cloaks over the lower half of his face with two of his fingers. And waits.

There, from the far corner of where he can see into the room, stands the same guard from before. Out of uniform, out of gear, and shirtless. His gloves are off. His hair is tied. His pants lay lax around his hips. Tall and unbelted, skin riddled in a thin film of sweat. Between his lips, an unlit cigarette.

Garrett takes a silent breath. He should leave now as he should.

He should turn and busy his head with the plottings of another plan. He should scour the other side of the building for another way in. He should grab for the rope and take its risk. He should look away. He should veer his eyes elsewhere.

Garrett should do a lot of things. But he does none of them.

Instead, he stays. And from underneath the half-lid of his gaze, he watches as Jame (because that is his name and Garrett knows this now more than he knows most things) bends and lights the tail-end of the cigarette in his mouth against the small-flame of the candlewick, etching the air with a smooth blow of fume. He sits then, slouched and open-legged, skin strung firm in ecru and muscle sinew that flexed wet like lathered cord. 

Slow, he unthreads the last of his lacings. 

Down, until the length of him is let free.

Immediately, something stirs itself against Garrett’s thigh. His throat corks shut. The corners of his vision blur fast around him. He swallows an impossible dryness, hears the pounding in his chest like drums. His fingers rouse and clench around the berm, his lips part open. He does not realize the quiet sound he makes once Jame’s hand starts moving, steady and terse, but knows only that his own is now inching towards a similar place from in between him.

Garrett wills it away.

And keeps it away. But his view through the glass remains the same:

The trace of him, the look of him, loose black hair that webbed against virile trims of perfect shapes. Lips tense against a half-gone cigarette, the low-gleam of blue underneath a line of lashes. Brow creased, sharp shouldered shudders, room full of fume, his hand, its rushed and noiseless flutter--

He comes.

And Garrett sees it.

How the white of it lands and paints his naked chest.

The blur from before begins to lessen.

Garrett’s heart hammers like a trill. Something like guilt in the pit of his stomach. And it comes out in a shivering panic, a red shame that marks the root of his throat.

An hour before dawn, Garrett climbs off the ledge and leaps for the rope and does not look back.

**oOo**

He lies awake in bed even when signs of light begin to don.

His cock is hard.

But he keeps his hands pinned and nestled underneath his head.

It doesn’t last. Not when his hand at last unclasps and begins to drift beneath him.

He traces the girth of himself. Slow at first. Against the occasional flinch and swell, and undoes the lower nettings of his leathers. He grits a hiss. It’s stiff enough to hurt. He grasps it by the shaft, and starts to move. Almost immediately, his hand and glove dampen. A cold and gentle shiver settles down his spine. Or something like excitement. He bites his lip and slides his palm down into a makeshift vice all along the length of it. Base to tip and under.

Faster, tighter, and his back begins to arch. His lip frees itself from his teeth. He gasps. The feeling is a landslide. Thrill, and all between.

He cannot think of the last time he did this, cannot think of the last time he wanted it so bad. To claim it, to take it, like so many things he already has. But different. Too different and also too far, but Garrett _wants_.

The thought of that man, the fumes of his cigarette. Wet-haired, blue-eyed. Against him and over. Inside. All these things, Garrett craves. All these things, he does not have. And he _has_ , but never enough.

It is a feeling that keeps him. Empty and acrid. But it is also wine.

His cock juts and his hip bucks forward once. A clenching in his pelvis, so good he tries his best to stall it. The start and end of something, seeded. He groans and spends in staggering completion. In lochs of white.

It stains his leathers and the left side of of his face.

Soon, the tide recedes.

There is only shame.

**oOo**

For the next three days, Garrett keeps himself busy.

Though, he does not go to Basso. Nor does he dwell on too much of really anything.

Much less, in or around the premise of the only job he’d ever dared himself to leave unfinished.

But a thought is a thought. And it steeples on like needle, an uneasy feeling that quills the pads of his every finger.

The daggers.

The gleam they’d given. As if they’d been all of the two stars in The City’s starless sky--

It is a living, breathing thing on Garrett’s mind.

So he steels himself, ebbs himself of feeling. And tells himself he needs them.

That he’ll have them.

That, amid all qualm, he will want for nothing.

**oOo**

 


	2. No Farther

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is three-parted now, for the sake of my sanity. e.e

**oOo**

At midnight, Garrett grabs his bow and goes.

It is perhaps twenty minutes that pass until he finds himself back at Greystone’s district, unseen and unheard.

He stands at the stone-curve of an alley, overlooking the same building from three days before.

Again, there are no lights that shine through from any of the ten flats at roof-level. And the guard, he knows, is yet due on duty. If not far-ways upon his roadside of return, at least five sectors down from here to Riverside’s wharf.

With a swift enough climb, and with an even swifter heist, the count of eight minutes should be more than enough.

He draws his bow and shoots a shaft of rope at the highest timbered slab.

And begins the climb.

**oOo**

He lands inside.

Uncovers the lower half of his face. And closes the lucarne behind him.

The air in the room is a mix of things.

Wildwood. Tobacco. A faint redolence he does not know the name of. Almost vegetal.

He takes a deeper breath than usual. Holds it. Tells himself not to. And takes in another.

Slow, he tests the wood of the floor with the weight of one foot. Firm, almost new. He bids himself to dart towards the opposite side, where the broad shape of an armoire draws him over to look.

Inside, an assortment of towels and blankets that tower in pattern alongside the other. Nothing worth its value in coin, and nothing worth taking. Garrett looks instead to the four drawers below. And opens them.

There, he finds several photoless frames. Goblets, cutlery, and empty bottles of whiskey. Midst them (and hidden quite well), he finds a single suede pouch which he unthreads by the string and opens. The thing is fat with coin and the occasional garnet.

He pockets it. But not before he catches sight of a half-hidden bundle, clothed over in the backmost of the drawer. He kneels down. And makes a reach for it.

Light. Like paper.

He stands, dusting it over and tugging it loose by its lace.

In his hands, the seldom affair of a dozen penciled portraits. Weathered, and modest in trait. A private collection, then. Garrett thumbs through each one. Traces and learns the worn lines of their creases by heart.  

Some show people. Some are shapeless. Some are too faded or too blurred to interpret.

Among them, only two lie distinct and unfolded.

One, a simple print of a young and doe-eyed woman.

The next, of Jame.

Fair-faced. Younger, dapper. Waves of hair that went and coiled to a length. An almost-white for the color of his eyes. But in Garrett’s mind, there is only ocean.

He turns it over in his hand. A date, and a fine line of letters writ in longhand. Elegant, but in the rule of foreign ligature. Slow, he traces the penning with his finger.

Minutes pass until he catches himself.

He takes his hand from it. Fast, as if skin had been slit.

He wraps it all back into a half-done bundle, not bothering to yarn over it's previous knot. And rids of it.

In the silence, a rush of blood settles on his face.

He shuts the armoire. Harder than necessary. But before he can step away, something tumbles from the armoire’s ledge.

He catches it, inches from the ground. A ring. He grasps it with the tips of two fingers, inspecting it.

Clustered. In carved cuts of citrine. Pleated, into the twists of a flower.

Its worth, Garrett thinks, is steep.

He pockets it.

The blades now, and he is finished here.

**oOo**

In all, there are only two rooms and a washroom to the layout of the flat.

Temporary, then. Or a kickstart for something much larger in planning.

And deeming from just how many valuables Garrett manages to find at every which corner, it is more than likely the latter.

He goes to where the master bedroom is located (the last place to cull and also where the daggers must by all means be), but stops himself mid-step.

Beneath him, a draft on the floor. Alongside a subtle resound of hollow.

He goes to his haunches, peeling the rug to the side. He palms the flooring until he feels the split of a fissure. He maneuvers the plank, slipping the ends of his fingernails into both its sides. With some difficulty, he lifts it off. Inside, a weapon case. Broad, but small enough to fit the mark. The case itself is embellished, secured from the front.

In an instant, an indescribable thrill takes Garrett by the pith of his throat. And it nips him there, almost sweetly, in short-chutes of verve. It is bread thawed upon a decade of hunger. It is water from the wellborn’s well. It is electric and it is wretched. But always, it fills.

Quickly, he plucks out the lockpick and needle from under his glove. But it is work. And the lock itself must be particular, for it takes him much longer than expected to get through even the first two of its spindles.

He steadies his fingers. Slackens his movement. Levels closer towards his hands, and listens.

At last, Garrett manages it open.

In it, an impossible gleam of silver and steel. Two of the same. Spiraled and sculpted. Hilts bathed in gilt.

He reaches for them.

The blades are his, as they have been. But just as he is to claim them, his hands freeze over mid-air.

“Get up, little rat.”

It’s all he hears before he feels something sharp digging itself into the root of his spine. Deeper still, and it cleaves clean through his layer of leathers. Pierced, and it is cold enough to hurt. Only a half-push more of that inside him, and he knows he is either paralyzed or crippled.

He gets to his feet. But takes care not to stiffen. His hands level themselves someplace in front of him. His mind maps, all options reeling. Time slows.

“Good.” The voice is low as it is smooth. Garrett would know this. How there is only one like it in all that he knows. “A _practical_ rat. Now. Walk.”

Garrett does as he’s told. He’s led towards the wall.

“Stop.”

He does, not too far from the lucarne. He counts the seconds. Like colors in his mind.

“There. Drop all you have.” It is a demand. But it is also velvet on ice. Garrett does not move. “ _If_ you concede, my feverish friend, we’ll make well over a bottle of Dewar. If you do not.” He laughs. “Well. It would be a shame. But also a waste.”

“Sorry,” Garrett tells him. “I don’t drink.”

A slick sleight of hand towards his hip, and Garrett latches his finger into the loop of a makeshift flash-bomb. A month’s worth of articulate tooling, but not once does he think twice for its immediate use.

He blocks the air from his lungs. And pulls the clip of it loose. It rolls to the floor, in silent exhausts of camphor and sulphur, talcing the room.

Before Jame can react, or the sword at Garrett’s back can make for its move, Garrett lopes for the window, and grabs for the rope.

Behind him, a shatter of glass.

On ground, and he is meld into shadow.

**oOo**

When he returns to the tower, he distills all of his findings onto the face of his desk.

Aligned, he leaves them there.

And does not look at them again.

**oOo**

For the rest of the hour, he paces.

It is frustration and throe and much like a hole there is no foreseeable end to the thought or the reel of what happened.

An inch below, he had them. A second later, he hadn’t.

He looks at his hands. And sees the smudge of graphite like brands on the tips of his fingers.

It is flurry written there. But it is also confusion.

Wrought forth by far more than only two things.

**oOo**

The next night, Garrett does not think. Only does.

He goes back. Bow, quiver, and Blackjack.

It is a Saturday evening with the promise of storm in the sky. The Watch is stretched thin.

He idles at ground-level, surveying the building. The pieces of glass are still scattered all over the pavement. But the dormer itself has been screened over shut by a pile of furniture. He rounds the premise. And decides to cross in through the apartment on the opposite side.

The climb is quick. This time, by hand. With little effort, he finds himself standing in the same room from the previous night.

In all of the flat, he finds there is no one.

**oOo**

He locates the weapon case.

In a similar area. But underneath the guise of a different plank.

In a toil of only a couple of seconds, Garrett undoes the lock by mostly knack of recollect.

It clicks open. Time wheels in his chest, so loud in the silence he swears he's deafened.

He steadies a breath. Opens it. But finds nothing there.

His hands clench into half-fists. It is distress and reprieve and a tumult of far too many things that suddenly grip him. Yet, he stands. Unfurls his hands. And places the plank back to where it’d been.

Here, he will wait for what is his.

**oOo**

Veiled within the farthest corner of the foreroom, Garrett’s wait is rendered brief.

Footsteps and the jangling of keys, and the front door to the place flings open.

All clatter and mess with no grace at all placed. So much, that Garrett deems it must as well be the actions of a totally different person.

More stumbling, and the door is locked and slammed shut.

Garrett’s hand starts to move. Much on its own. Inching more and more towards the clamp of his bow. The other, to the whetted broadhead set sharp in his quiver, only to join them together in one single gesture of skill, all creak and metal and three-sided arc, his draw both true and inclined, pointing straight at the hallway’s empty corridor where he knows a head might soon be brought forth enough to quickly target upon.

And really, it could go one of both ways this night. What with his bearing worn thin and his thoughts strung so frail on a dithering string, and so he does not _think_ nor does he _care_ but simply relies on the upshot of _act_ —

Then, like a blow to the jaw, he sees it.

There, lit low in what few rays of moon managed to bloom the middlemost of the room:

Jame.

Undone at the vest and hair splayed in all ways. Speckled in lip-paint and powder and soused in some scent of flowery incense. No moss nor wildwood. But candied and plummy and sweet like a woman’s perfume. At his hips, the daggers. At his face, a crooked grin and something like the reek of cheap liqueur that began to swiftly foil the space of the room.

It is a hammer struck, a cut leeching through. An impossible weight that tethers in stone under all of his bones.

But even now Garrett does not retract his bow. Nor does he waver. But instead tightens and pulls and _squeezes_ until the nock of it can stretch nor draw no farther—

His arms fall.

Heavy and useless.

The bow and the arrow drop to the floor. It is an inexcusable clamor of noise that rattles throughout. But Garrett does not move to hide. Nor does he tread from where he stands.

In an instant, the lights are switched on. Not a reed lies between them.

Jame sees him, half falling and half on the wall. And laughs.

“You,” he says. “In my home again, of all homes—skittering, _skulking_ , dressed in, whatever it is you’re wearing—”

He slides on the stucco, slipping. But quickly glides back up, messily unsheathing one of the blades and pointing it at Garrett. He chuckles. And in an uneven line, begins to approach.

“Or,” he adds. “Have you come to kill me at last? For all the...pretty little things I have?”

The dagger lands on Garrett’s chest, dangerously pointed and sharp. But Garrett himself is paved like a stamp against the wall. The room blears. His skin tautens. His lips dry. His legs feel far and detached. He hears his bow being kicked to the side, landing someplace against the opposite wall. Can feel the Blackjack being plucked from his hip, dangled in front of his eyes before being left to thud and roll on the rug.

“Or, perhaps..." A whisper this time. So low and slurred, Garrett himself can hardly hear it. “It is sin that errs you...”

A final step towards him, and a mere inch lies between them. The point of the blade drifts from his chest, tracing in turn the vulnerable line of his neck. Up, until it needles on his cheek, clinching through skin and towards the under-cord of his eyelid. There, it stays. A wordless warning.

Garrett’s shoulder hitches. He presses back, so hard it almost hurts. His fingers spread and flatten on the wall. He grabs at nothing. He pictures blood. A pike of pain and through his skull—

Then, the pressure eases.

It shifts. Low, until the tine hooks on the fabric of his overlay. The cloth slips from his face. Down, until the whole of it is pinned underneath his chin, unmasking him entirely.

The loom of the dagger vanishes. He hears it chime to the floor. Quaking in echo, until at last it quiets and quells.

For a moment, Garrett cannot breathe.

His mouth parts. His heart, a war-drum. He cannot taste the swells of air he swallows in.

Heat. Movement. Fingers on his chin.

On his lips, a kiss.

**oOo**


End file.
